"I don't know very much, Margaret; but everybody is allowed to think," said the girl; "and old families, like old clothes, most surely wear out. I am not sure that it is such an advantage to be old. If I were a new man, I think I would be proud of it. It would be all my own doing; or, if I were a new man's daughter, it would be grand to think that it was all from my father, him and nobody else. That would be something to be proud about."
"Money," Margaret said, laconically, and with an accent of disdain.
"Money! Oh, but I did not mean money."
"Do you know what you meant?" said Miss Margaret, scornfully. "What does a new man, as you call it, make but money? For honours, you must have time and opportunity. In these days it is a quack medicine, or a new invention for taking work out of poor men's hands, or the grand art of selling water for milk, and carrion for meat, and the sweepings of the house for honest cloth. It's that that makes a new man; and it would be a great credit and honour, no doubt, to be his daughter."
"Margaret, you know that is not what I meant," cried Lilias, indignant. "I was not thinking of the people that are only rich. I was thinking——"
"I well understand that you know nothing about it; and how should you? But one thing of this age is that the babes and sucklings just think themselves as wise as Solomon in all his glory. I cannot hear if that piano is aye bumming. Bless me, what a waste for a young man that might be on the hill-side—or he might be in the colonies making corn grow for the good of man—or taming down the savages in Africa."
"He could not be on the hill-side, if you mean shooting, Margaret, for you forget it's only July——"
"He might be doing many better things than sitting at a piano at his age, deluding an old maid."
"Margaret!" cried Lilias, springing up with flashing eyes. "Is it my Jean you are calling that?"
"Well! and what else is she? or me, either, for that matter. Just two old maids: and, for anything we know, you may be a third yourself, more likely than not, unless you take the first that offers—which was what neither her nor me were allowed to do."